' Adyashanti - Enlightenment and The End of Your World '...

~ LETTING GO OF YOUR ARGUMENT WITH WHAT IS ~ Sometimes, when things get bad enough, when the suffering gets deep enough or intense enough, the whole egoic wheel stops spinning. It becomes too painful to identify with the conditioned thoughts in your head and with the chronic painful reactions that are associated with them. And when the vortex stops, and you are right in the middle of the greatest grief, right in the middle of the greatest torment and suffering, something else may dawn on you. A sense of peace and freedom may be felt at that moment, and it shows you that nothing really needs to change. You don’t need to struggle against yourself. Just the opposite. All you need is the willingness to question your mind’s conclusions, the willingness to just relax. Instead of trying to change now, just let now be as it is, even though your mind may have plenty of reasons why you should resist it. Try it anyway.

What happens when you let go of your argument with what is? No matter how you’re feeling—whether you’re feeling good or anxious, happy or sad, conflicted or free—just let it be. Experiment to see what happens when you stop being in conflict with yourself. When you let go of conflict, even for a moment, there’s a natural stopping. In the moment you’re not in conflict with yourself, in the moment where you’re willing to nolonger be in opposition to anything, you come completely into now, into this moment. What you’ll begin to experience is a peace and a stillness—a deep inner quietness. At that moment, you’re experiencing a whole different dimension of consciousness, one beyond the ego and its activity.

Many people think that this dimension of consciousness of peace, stillness, and well-being is something for which you have to work very hard to attain—that somehow it’s far away and that you must earn it in some way. But all these conclusions are just more thoughts in the mind, so as with all thoughts, you can choose to no longer grasp at them. You can open to a state of being where there are no conclusions, where your mind is wide open, where your consciousness is at ease, and where you can begin to touch upon a whole new dimension of consciousness, a consciousness that actually is at peace. It’s an invitation to just be, to be that consciousness, and also to act from it.

Once you taste this stillness, this peace, then the ego will stand out in stark contrast to it. The vortex of suffering will then be much easier to see. You may go unconscious for moments, you may not always see the ego trying to hijack you with various thoughts, but even when that happens, if you just stop for a moment and see the pattern, then a gap opens up. It’s a doorway to a different possibility—a possibility to experience the peace and happiness for which you’ve always been longing—even when you are right in the middle of conflict.

~ Adyashanti ~
Falling Into Grace